A MAN whose abusive behaviour towards former partners included using his car as a weapon has been jailed after treating women in an “aggressive, possessive and controlling manner”.

Perry Race, 31, pursued one former partner while she was on the morning school run with her children.

He rammed his car into the back of her vehicle during the chase.

Chelmsford Crown Court heard this piece of dangerous driving was just one example of the abusive behaviour visited against a former partner after their relationship ended in September 2018.

The victim would spot Race sitting in his car across the road from her house. She would receive constant phone calls and texts from him.

The court was told he would send her photographs of her front door and on one occasion smashed her car windscreen.

This behaviour came to a head when Race forced his way into her home one evening, immediately after a friend had left her house.

Charlotte Oliver, prosecuting, said: “She presumed Mr Race was hiding in the back garden whilst her friend was over.

“Because within 30 seconds of this gentleman driving away, Mr Race came flying through the door and pushed her into the stair gate across the lounge door. She fell to the floor and the stair gate came off the wall.

“He took her phone out of her hand, she tried to get it back and Mr Race punched her with a right fist to the left side of her face.”

Race hurled abuse at her and left with her phone.

In a victim impact statement, the victim said Race’s behaviour had caused her to move away from her home and leave three places of work.

She was left “terrified of the day he is released from prison".

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The court also heard details of an assault carried out against another partner, this time in June last year while Race was the subject of a community order.

This victim said while the relationship started well, it didn’t take long for Race to “show his true colours”.

One evening, after an argument in which Race demanded her phone, he stopped his car next to the victim in Tyler Avenue, Clacton.

Ms Oliver said: “Mr Race has said to her: ‘Do you think this is funny, I can play games too. I’ve done it before, I can do it again. I’ll win’.”

After exiting his car he screamed in her face, before swinging his fist at the victim, causing her to flinch.

Race then snatched the woman’s phone from her hand, before smashing it on the floor.

He picked up a long piece of wood left discarded nearby and hurled it at the woman, causing a scratch on her leg and a rip to her shorts.

In a statement after this attack, the victim said she “thought she was going to die”.

Race, of Porter Way, Clacton, admitted assault occasioning actual bodily harm, dangerous driving, theft, three counts of criminal damage and assault by beating.

Gazette: Perry RacePerry Race

Nneka Akudolu, mitigating, acknowledged Race had tried to blame his victims when talking to the author of a pre-sentence report.

She said: “Mr Race accepts, not only in the letter he took the time to write to Your Honour, but also in saying to the author the report, he has been the problem in his relationships, not the women who he tried to apportion blame to.

“He’s asked me to make that clear.”

She said Race had struggled with substance misuse, which he accepted made him paranoid and resulted in a “complete lack of trust”.

Judge Mary Loram QC described Race as a domestic abuser who had abused or assaulted four different partners.

She said: “The argument that it is in the public interest to try and address your offending behaviour would have held some force, were you not already subject to a community order at the time you committed one of these offences.”

Judge Loram said he had treated woman in an “aggressive, possessive and controlling manner”.

“I’ve read a letter from you in which you say you were sorry, however only last week you were denying any responsibility for what you had done,” she added.

“In this report, you gave detail as to how each of those woman was to blame and how it wasn’t your fault.

“That explanation involved you being the victim and your ex-partners being to blame.

“I’m asked to accept you’ve had a sudden change of heart in the last few days, but that simply makes no sense at all.

“You have shown I’m afraid, in that respect, that you still have little to no understanding of your behaviour.”

Race was jailed for 27 months and hit with a restraining order prohibiting contact with both women for ten years.

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